


where our boundaries were thinnest

by suitablyskippy



Category: We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Codependency, F/F, Gen, Obsessive Behavior, Pre-Canon, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 17:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: “There can’t be anyone else,” I said. “There isn’t anyone else. No one else exists except you and me and Uncle Julian and Jonas; all the rest of them are dead and only pretending to be alive. If you married a husband he would be dead and you would bring a dead man into our home, so you can’t.”(There was nothing a husband could do for Constance that I couldn’t, except take her name away from her and give her a baby.)





	where our boundaries were thinnest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [singedsun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singedsun/gifts).



> (Or alternatively I could have scrapped all those tags and just tagged 'Canon-Typical Merricat POV' instead, which would be just as accurate and definitely a whole lot more comprehensive...) 
> 
> Set about three years before the book begins, with a couple of very minor liberties taken with the timing of some past events Merricat mentions briefly in canon.

 

“All too often overlooked is the matter of Mary Katherine, who was known as Merricat by those to whom she was close: I remember this very well,” Uncle Julian told us. “I am uncertain whether I myself was close to Mary Katherine; I regret that I cannot recall by which name I was prone to addressing her, as this might otherwise have shed a little light upon the matter. Constance?” 

“Yes, Uncle?” 

“There are crumbs upon my blanket, Constance, or so I seem to perceive. Mary Katherine would of course have been my niece, but it would be foolhardy to surmise from this alone that we shared a certain closeness; a familial tie certainly does not guarantee a familiar tie. Indeed, if it did, then perhaps fewer families would find themselves extinguished by one of their own – although I do not seek to imply that such a fate befell my brother’s family; the jury stood firm in their agreement that it did not, and I have always held that my niece Constance lacks the temperament for murder on such a scale. A single homicide, perhaps. Two at most; I could perhaps be convinced that my soft-hearted niece would find herself stirred to murder two of her closest family members, appropriately provoked, but I really cannot picture her slaughtering any more than that. Particularly not in a single efficient sitting; my niece Constance has always preferred to proceed step by cautious step. Tell me, Constance: your sister Mary Katherine; by which name do you recall that you referred to her?”

“I call her Merricat,” said Constance. “She is here with us, Uncle Julian. She’s sitting right here beside you with mud on her face and twigs in her hair.”

“Oh, perhaps,” said Uncle Julian graciously, “yes, perhaps it is so. I am sure you are right, dear Constance. But your sister, rest her soul, has gone woefully unattested by what I consider a superfluity of otherwise reliable sources, and I cannot help but wonder whether in her absence from my work I have deprived myself of a vital piece of the puzzle.”

“I am a vital piece of the puzzle,” I told Constance, putting a warm plate from the oven in front of Uncle Julian’s place at the table. 

“And I certainly wouldn’t wish to deprive myself of you,” said Constance. “Oh – Merricat, no! You can’t set the table with such dirty hands! Put that plate aside to be washed, please – we can’t allow Uncle Julian to eat his dinner from a dirty plate. Here: he may have mine instead,” she said, and pushed it across to him. 

“But now _you_ have no plate,” I said. 

“I shall take another from the cupboard,” said Constance. “Like so—and now I have a plate again. Will you go and wash your hands, Merricat?”

“But now your plate is cold,” I said. “You are the only one of us who has a cold plate, Constance. You should have a warm plate too.”

“Mine will be warm too, once it has a nice warm dinner on it,” said Constance. 

“Shut away on the last night,” said Uncle Julian, “starved of food and deprived of attention. And yet we continue to deprive her of attention even now, do we not? Erased from life, young Mary Katherine finds herself erased in death.”

“Merricat hasn’t been erased from anywhere, Uncle,” Constance said. “Though perhaps that’s why she won’t go and clean her hands. Perhaps she’s so dirty that she’s afraid a little soap will wash her right out of existence.”

“Oh, soap has its dangers, I won’t deny it; although arsenic has considerably more, and if one has partaken enough of the latter then one faces consequently very little danger from the former. But I tell you, Constance, I am confident: I remember that Mary Katherine _was_ known often as Merricat – I am quite certain on this point; I will not be told otherwise, unless I am wrong, in which case please do not hesitate to correct me.”

“You’re right,” I said to Constance. “I’m made of dirt; that’s why I can’t wash. If I wash then all the dirt will come off and you won’t be able to see me anymore.”

“I’ll see your dirty clothes walking around, and then I’ll know you’re inside them,” said Constance. 

“I’ll take them off,” I said. “If I am naked and clean I will be invisible, and you’ll never know where I am. You won’t know if I’m in the kitchen or the garden. You won’t even know if I’m at home; I could leave and never tell you, and you would never know. And when I came back, you would never know that I had gone.”

“Merricat,” said Constance; she did not say anything else. She looked at me across the kitchen table and I could see that she was chilled. I was chilled, too; I had been chilled as I heard the words come from my mouth and wished at once that I had not said them, but it was too late and the words were out and the kitchen was no longer firm and proper in the way it wrapped around us. 

“She was absent that night, I believe,” said Uncle Julian, whose mood was lively and unaffected by the sick black coldness in the air. “Young Merricat, née Mary Katherine, most cherished and truculent progeny of the Blackwood clan; although my memory is not what it was, Constance, as I have reminded you, or believe I have, and if I have not then I shall certainly make note to myself to ensure I do again; it wouldn’t do to forget that I forget. I _must_ have my pen,” Uncle Julian told us with authority. “Make note that I must make note of my need for my pen, please, Constance. In any case, Mary Katherine was absent. I most certainly believe that she was absent.”

“You’re quite right, Uncle,” Constance said to Uncle Julian; and, “Merricat,” Constance said to me; I knew she said it to me because she would hardly have said it to Uncle Julian: it was my name and it belonged to me. She put her warm hand on mine and I looked at it. “Merricat, don’t say that. You mustn’t. Please.” 

I was looking only at Constance’s hand on my hand. “Now you’ll need to wash yourself too,” I said. “Silly Constance, you forgot I hadn’t washed my hands yet. Now my dirt is your dirt too.” 

“Merricat,” said Constance. “Please, Merricat.”

“The other trouble is that she must be twice indexed, Constance, your sister, of whom I speak. Once, as _Blackwood, Mary Katherine_. And then twice, as _Blackwood, Merricat_. Yes,” said Uncle Julian firmly, “yes, just so... Indeed, it occurs to me now that perhaps this is why the literature has overlooked her so thoroughly before this point. It is twice the work to speak of Mary ‘Merricat’ Katherine than it is to speak of her family; she must be twice considered, twice named; she is one person who must be treated as two when, in the eyes of most, she is hardly anyone at all.”

“That isn’t kind, Uncle,” said Constance. “Merricat is certainly someone: she is my own dear sister.”

I picked up Jonas from where he was prowling along the windowsill, twining his way through pans and potted plants, and I put him on the blanket which covered Uncle Julian’s knees. Both of them were surprised; Jonas put out his claws and turned all around in a hurry, twisting up the blanket, and though Uncle Julian wasn’t able to feel if claws were in his legs or not he was startled to be suddenly cold with a cat hurrying around in circles on his knees and he shouted in alarm for Constance and she went to him. 

In all the noise and chaos I was quiet and didn’t move; I was silent and thinking. The change around us had been sudden and shocking, and unmistakable; it was obscene in its wrongness, as if all the wallpaper in our house had come loose at once, peeling and unsticking in long ugly strips falling down towards the floor. None of the walls met properly; the ceiling was no longer correctly aligned, and if it rained then we would all get wet because the roof would not protect us. It was possible the foundations of our house had been damaged, in which case it was also possible that the stairs down to the cellar were no longer safe and Constance would be in danger whenever she next wanted to add to the jars of preserves. Our security was breached, and I was the one who had breached it. 

“Merricat,” Constance said to me again; she was tending to Uncle Julian and he was fussing loudly about his blanket. “Take Jonas away, please.”

“Jonas likes it there,” I said. “He wants to be with Uncle Julian. He jumped down all on his own.”

“Oh, untruthful Merricat! I saw you pick him up and put him there.”

“Jonas told me he wanted to be there. He said the jump was too big for him, so he asked if I would help.”

Constance looked at me softly, even though Uncle Julian was still clutching her arm and shouting in her ear about his cold toes and our dead family. “Be kind, Merricat,” she told me. 

“ _Constance_ is kind,” I said stubbornly; but I picked Jonas up again and sat down and put him in my own lap, where he turned in one circle before settling down to nap, and when Constance reminded me that I needed to wash my hands before I ate I told her that I couldn’t, because Jonas was sleeping on me, and it wouldn’t be kind to disturb him. “And it’s important to be kind,” I explained to her; “I was taught that by my sister Constance. It’s more important to be kind than clean, I think. I’d like more potatoes than usual today, please, Constance.”

We went to wash our hands together after we had eaten. The cold water splashed in the cold sink and we shivered, shoulder to shoulder. I thought it might be possible to pretend that our security hadn’t been breached, at least until I was able to repair it, after which there would be no need to pretend in any case; and then I thought that perhaps I had only imagined that our security had been breached, because here we were, Constance and I, washing our hands before dinner; soon, I thought, we would go back into the kitchen and listen to Uncle Julian discussing his work while we readied to eat, and as I began to feel a little warmer and reassured and more comfortable I thought that perhaps I would ask Constance for more potatoes than usual, because Jonas and I had been busy in the woods today, and I was particularly hungry – but then Constance spoke, and I knew I had not imagined it, and I was shivering at her side again as the cold water took the last of the color from our hands. 

“I can’t imagine anything worse than if you were to leave without my knowing it,” Constance said; she spoke in a quiet way, as if she’d held the same thought within her for a long time and was only now bringing it out to share with me. “If you were gone from me – if I lost you, but thought I had you still here safe beside me... If I believed, but I was wrong to believe—”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “Never. I didn’t mean it. It was wrong and a lie.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you went, I think,” Constance said to me; she was trying to be brave, but I was so afraid that I could not move. “Some day, if that’s what you’d like; some day in the future, if you wanted to go, then I wouldn’t mind it. I’d do my very best not to mind it.” 

She took her hands from the flowing water and dried them; I could not do the same because I could not move. I could only say with my icy tongue: “I will never go.”

“But you must tell me if you do, Merricat. You mustn’t ever leave me without telling me,” said Constance. Then she smiled, to cancel out the way her voice had sounded, and then she laughed a little to cancel out the way her smile had trembled and been unsteady until she steadied it. She touched my cheek, but her fingers were still cold, and I shivered. 

It was too late, though. Our security was breached and now it was too late to cancel anything out. I thought of the harmful and malignant forces which I knew were always prowling the limits of our grounds, testing the strength of our protection, looking for a way to come inside, and I was sick with the knowledge that at last they knew our weakness. 

And it _was_ a weakness – I had known always that this was the only way in which Constance and I were weak: we were two people, and this meant we could be parted. The first and greatest threat to our security was the risk of separation. 

 

+++

 

Our telephone rang on a Tuesday evening. Uncle Julian had not been well that day and so he had gone to bed early; after the telephone had been ringing for a minute or two Constance smiled at me and asked if I wasn’t feeling a little sleepy too, although it was not yet the time when we normally went to bed, and I knew that she wanted to escape from the ringing of the telephone in the hall. 

They did not often attempt to reach us through the telephone. It was probably less satisfying for them, I thought, if they could not see us or our house or anything which held our touch while they were hating us; and I thought it must have been difficult for them, too, trying to fit the vastness of their malevolence into the thin spiraling shape of telephone wires: hatred as complex as threading a needle. 

But still the calls came sometimes, and when the telephone rang, we let it ring. If we picked it up only to put it down again and end the call, then that would encourage those on the other end; it would tell them we were here, and could hear the sound of their interference in our lives, and could be pushed to react to them if only they pestered us for long enough. 

“I don’t know what they want,” said Constance; she had come to be with me in my room and she was sitting on my bed in her nightgown and robe. Her hair was washed and brushed and loose; it was soft gold rippling around her. “I really can’t imagine, Merricat. What do we have that they would ever want?”

“Everything,” I said. “Our happiness and joy. All of it.”

Constance looked at the lamp beside my bed. “That can’t be it,” she said to my lamp, and smiled. “No, that can’t be it. It must be something else.”

“To them, it seems that we must be from some other world,” I said to her. “And they can tell that our world has always been only happy and kind and sweet to us, and because they are jealous they wish to ruin it. They are sick, so they want us to be sick as well. That’s what they want, Constance – all of them, outside and trying to get in; what they have is infectious, and they hate us for living without infection. They want us to be sick like them. They want to see us rot before we die.”

“Your imagination is bigger than anything but your appetite for stewed apples, my Merricat,” said Constance, but she was smiling more tenderly now, at me and not my lamp, and I knew that she was soothed. “I’ll brush your hair before you sleep, if you like.” 

Downstairs the telephone still rang; it shook the house with its demands for our attention. I didn’t care to have my hair brushed, but it was comforting to sit with Constance and let her touch me. The smell of soap and shampoo was pleasant only when it came from Constance; to be touched was pleasant only when the touch belonged to Constance. 

“The only thing,” said Constance after a while, in a voice which seemed to come from very far away even though really she was still only at my back, brushing patiently through my tangles, “the only thing which I mind about it, really – and I don’t mind it so much, of course; it isn’t any trouble, not really... But when they call us, I think of them wanting to call us. And I think of them thinking of us. And I think – before they call us, they must think of us, and then decide to call us; and then after they decide to call us they have to find out our telephone number, and make a note of it and keep it tucked away somewhere safe – and then they must still decide _when_ they’ll call us, and go to their own telephone and dial the correct number to reach us – and then they listen and listen to it ring, waiting for us, to hear us, to speak to us... And all the while they must be thinking of us.” She was no longer brushing my hair: her voice was quiet and her hands were still. One was resting against my back, warm through my nightgown. “And that’s what I don’t like. To think of _them_ – thinking of _us_ —”

I pushed away from Constance and scrambled from my bed and left the room. Outside my warm bedroom the house was dark and in the darkness the telephone rang and rang and rang; I went down through the darkness and the noise and I went into the kitchen and took the silver nutcracker from its drawer, and then I went back to the telephone on its table in the dark hall. I was not allowed to touch knives, and I was allowed to use the big kitchen scissors only when Constance was there to supervise, but I pulled the telephone’s wire from the wall and crushed it in the strong teeth of the nutcracker again and again, until it was mangled and chewed, and useless, and the telephone was silenced. 

I put the nutcracker back where it belonged and went upstairs to my room again. 

“Now we’ll never know if they think of us,” I said to Constance. “Now we’ll never know if anyone thinks of us again.”

“Uncle Julian will certainly think of me whenever his stomach begins to think of breakfast,” said Constance, and then she laughed; she reached up and took my hand, and I sat with her again as she brushed away the tangles she had not brushed away before. 

Our house was silent and would remain silent; no noise which was not our own would intrude, and this was good. My bedroom was comfortable; its walls tonight were strong and safe around us, and could not be passed through even by ghosts: this was also good. But I was thinking of the breach in our security only days before, and of how long the telephone had rung tonight before I silenced it forever, and I thought of the way that Constance and I were two people who were apart no matter how much we were together, no matter how silent our house, no matter how firm and strong the walls it held around us, no matter how much love and care was in Constance as she brushed away my tangles: and I was chilled. 

“No one but you will ever think of me again,” I said to Constance; I was hoping that my words would chase away the chill before it could reach coldly out towards her too. “And no one but I will ever think of you again, either. But you won’t notice any difference, Constance, because I think of you always.”

“Gallant Merricat, don’t you know that I think of you all the time?” 

Constance was smiling at me with such warmth that I knew at once she could not feel the chill, and I was relieved; I turned up my face and she kissed me on the mouth good-night before she left, closing my door on darkness. 

 

+++

 

Every now and then they still came to us. They came from the village and they came through the village from beyond it, and all of them came with their cold and greedy eyes and their hands which clutched like babies’ fists, opening and closing as if they had a right to seize anything they saw, to grasp whatever came in reach and take it for their own. Rarely they left letters: delivered by hand, in envelopes and on postcards and on sheets of paper crumpled and hurled at our front steps from a distance; they were left outside the door and pushed through the crack beneath the door; they were not left in the mailbox, because I had filled it with stones and mud not long after the trial and there was no space for letters to find their way inside. 

When letters came, I burned them. I was allowed to use matches so long as Constance selected the match I was to use and put it into my hand herself, and I took the letters always to the same flat rock and burned them unread so that the spite and hate and filth which filled them would not be able to escape into our world. 

The sparks jumped; the paper curled and crisped and flamed up and was ash. Sometimes in the little licking fire I saw words spit up on flecks of paper, before they burned up too. The burning words were not good words; all words became bad words when I saw them leap up in the flames, even words like _if_ and _burial_ and _judgement_ , and if I saw a word jump up while it was burning then I was not allowed to speak that word myself for twelve hours afterwards, to rob it of any final bad power which might still contaminate it. In this way we were safe against the letters. 

We closed our doors against them and when they came we closed our curtains against them too; Constance closed her eyes against them and often she put her hands over her ears and then I put my own hands over hers, so that her ears were closed against them too. If it hadn’t been impolite we would have also fastened our locks against them, but not all our callers were of the type that tore up flowers from our flowerbeds while leaving foul letters in exchange: and hospitality was important to my sister Constance. 

“And Anne Jansey,” said Rebecca Bell, “you remember Anne Jansey, Connie, she was in the grade below us in high school, _you_ remember; well, listen up – _engaged_.” She lifted her teacup impressively, and set it down again as the hot tea sloshed. “Her and Nick Ronsley – now, _you_ remember Nick; nice-looking couple, I guess, except for that funny eye of his – _you_ remember his funny eye, Connie, you bet you do—”

Constance nodded and nodded and nodded politely. The yellow silk ribbon in her hair shone brightly in the sunlight which poured in through the high windows of our mother’s drawing room. She was more beautiful than anyone alive; she was certainly more beautiful than anyone dead. 

“We had good times, didn’t we? You and me, Connie,” said Rebecca Bell. 

“Oh, plenty of them,” Constance said warmly, because she was charming to visitors even when they dragged into our house so many names from outside our house and threw them around as carelessly as paint; I saw how carefully Constance didn’t flinch every time another stranger’s name splattered messy and ugly across the fine rose-pink of the drawing room. 

“Good times,” said Rebecca Bell again, firmly. “We had some real good times, Connie, so I’ll tell you; I’ll get right to it. My brother – _you_ remember – he’s home from college, and here _you_ are, Connie, all alone, and my brother – he’s a real thoughtful guy, my brother; sweet-natured, heart of gold, _loves_ kids, proper old-fashioned family man – ah, but—maybe not... _that_ , so much...” That loud voice was suddenly nervous and stumbling, and I knew she had remembered that she was speaking to Constance Blackwood, whose family were all dead and murdered; Constance was watching her and smiling, and I knew that Constance knew it too. With a strong effort Rebecca Bell recovered and tried to pretend she had never stumbled. “But he says to me – my brother, he says to me he’s been wondering, you know, about _you_ , how you’re doing up here... And he’d sure like to know how things are for you, all on your own. Poor Miss Blackwood, poor pretty Miss Blackwood, with her lovely face and her lonely heart...”

“Oh, my heart isn’t lonely at all,” said Constance; she was looking modestly down but she was firm, and I was proud of her. “My heart has all the company it could possibly want: I have my sister Merricat, and we have our Uncle Julian.” 

“And my cat Jonas,” I said, from the corner. 

Rebecca Bell’s eyes slid to me, and then slid quickly off again so she wouldn’t react and give away to Constance that she’d seen me. She didn’t want to notice me, I thought; perhaps she believed that by pretending I was a ghost she could keep Constance from noticing that _she_ was the ghost, and hadn’t passed on the way she should have done, but instead remained behind, and was too ashamed to admit how long ago she had died, and how cowardly she was to cling onto our rightful world the way she still did. 

“You can’t expect me to believe you never think of it,” said Rebecca Bell; she was even ruder than I’d thought, telling Constance what she could and could not do. “You’re telling me you don’t, Connie? You’re twenty-five years old, same as me, I know you are, Connie, and you’re telling me you never so much as _dream_ of it?”

“Really, I’m so busy I hardly have time to dream at all,” said Constance lightly. “The only thing I dream of with any frequency is Merricat always remembering to wipe her muddy shoes clean before she comes inside.”

“Merricat?” said Rebecca Bell. She didn’t like that she had to look at me again, and she didn’t like that now she couldn’t keep pretending that it was me who was the ghost: I could tell from how reluctantly she turned her head. “Well, sure, I guess she’d like it too – wouldn’t you, Mary Katherine? You’d like your pretty big sister to go out into the world and make the most of her prettiness while she’s got it – you’d like her to meet a handsome man who’d sweep her off her feet – wouldn’t you? You think it’d be good for her, don’t you, giving a good man a chance, seeing if he can’t win away her heart?” 

Her voice sweetened when she spoke to me. Sweet as sugar, I thought, sweet as if she’d just swallowed down a whole tablespoon of sugar, and I thought of the frightened way her face would twist and change if I said those words to her aloud and I smiled and looked away from her. Constance was wearing a dress of cornflower blue and I looked at that instead, the smooth fabric over her knees, where her hands were folded tight and calm; it was bluer than anything I’d ever seen and I filled my mind with it; now the whole world was blue, and the whole world was Constance, and the whole world was before me on the sofa. 

“Tongue-tied?” Rebecca Bell said knowingly to Constance. 

“Hardly,” said Constance. She was charming and amused and my sister and the whole world. “Merricat’s just a little quiet, sometimes. I think she likes to hear herself think.”

I wasn’t tongue-tied. I would have spoken if Rebecca Bell existed, but she didn’t. I couldn’t see her, I couldn’t hear her; she was dead and she was a ghost and I was not a child, to believe in ghosts – I had not been a child these last two years, since I had woken one night and found my sheets and nightgown red and wet beneath me in the dark; and after I had woken Constance too and she had calmed from her fright at the sight of me all bloodied at her bedside she had told me that this was the evidence of having shed my childhood overnight, and I had been happy: I liked the mess, and I was pleased that my body chose to express itself so violently. I was a woman as much as Constance, and as a woman I would not speak to ghosts. 

Our family were not ghosts, of course: they had not died in a way which would make them ghosts. They had died in a way which would only make them dead. 

“You’re welcome to stay for lunch,” Constance added; she made the offer with open innocence. “We have so much to catch up on, don’t we? Merricat and I will have a mushroom pie; it’s in the oven just now, but I think it will be ready soon.”

But Rebecca Bell was very busy elsewhere this lunchtime: she remembered this all in a hurry and then she left all in a hurry as well, and I locked the door behind her. 

“I don’t think we will let her in again,” said Constance when Rebecca Bell was gone. “I don’t imagine she will try to visit again, anyway. But if she does, then I don’t think we’ll let her in.”

“She spoke too loudly,” I said. “She should have been quieter. So quiet no one could hear her.”

“And do you know something, Merricat? I don’t believe we _were_ friends in high school,” Constance said, and when I laughed at her frankness she laughed too, pleased to be free of ghosts. We were happy and free, tidying the drawing room and removing the presence of others; I put my arms around Constance and she laughed again and held me close. She was still shivering a little, from all the fear she hadn’t shown while Rebecca Bell was still in our house speaking loudly and throwing strangers’ names around, and I was proud again of her bravery. “Of course high school was years ago, and many things have changed since then; perhaps I really have forgotten how it was... But I don’t think we were friends at all. I think we hardly ever talked.”

“And don’t you regret it now, Constance? Now you know what you were missing out on?” 

“I regret it more than anything,” said Constance. “I’m filled with regret; I’m consumed by it. Do you imagine everyone becomes so friendly once they start considering their brother an eligible bachelor?” 

“Eligible for what?” 

“For leaving bachelorhood behind,” said Constance. “For marriage, my Merricat. Didn’t you hear her? I could hear the wedding bells ringing out behind every word she said; her mother must never have taught her that subtlety is ladylike, or perhaps she just doesn’t care to be ladylike at all.”

Not even Constance’s mischievous mood could stop the world from losing its color. Our pretty pink drawing room, more delicate and lovely than anywhere, was grey and white and black and cold and my bones were carved inside me from old cold stones and Constance’s cold arm around me and Constance’s cold hand resting on the frail icicle strands of my hair all chilled me so deeply that I felt my heart shudder and become ice too. 

There had been a breach in our security, and I had caused it with my careless words, and now here was a third sudden shocking horror and I knew that this was it: _this_ was the threat which had been trying to force itself inside our home, and _this_ was the sly catastrophic malice which I had known was prowling the edges of our grounds, testing our defenses, mapping out our boundaries and weak points and strengths. I recognized it at once for what it was, and I was sick to know that it knew our weakness: we were not one person, and it would be possible for an especially crafty threat to maneuver its way between us and cause harm from within. 

Danger had shown its face to me at last, and it was worse and more hideous than anything I could have imagined. 

I pushed away. The world turned end over end and was pink again: soft pink wallpaper, soft pink sofa, soft pink and golden Constance who was looking down into my face with worry. 

“Merricat?” she said to me. 

“Jonas and I would like a handful of seeds and nuts with our lunch today,” I said, and picked up the tea-tray and left the drawing room and went calmly out into the hall and through into the kitchen. Soon it would be time for lunch; we could not linger in the drawing room, or our lunch would be served late. We could not risk any further disruption to the safe and steady pattern of our days. 

 

+++

 

If Constance had a husband then he would touch her, I thought; he would have to touch her, because before he could become her husband he would have to propose to her, and he would have to take her hand in his to slide the ring onto her finger, so at the very least Constance’s husband would have to touch her hand. 

And I thought he would probably touch other parts of her too, this husband. I thought about it a lot, and could see no way that Constance might avoid it. When they were married he would reach out to lift her wedding veil from her face, and he might accidentally brush her cheek as he took the lace between his fingers. It was possible they might dance together, if it couldn’t be avoided, in which case he would probably put his big hand against her waist and clasp her hand in his. They would have to stand close against each other if they danced like that: body pressed to body. If any man tried to press his body to mine I would stamp on his foot with the sole of my brown shoe and grind down hard until all of his bones were crunching and his sock was staining red as the blood soaked through it; but Constance was too gentle to stamp even on a man who deserved it, I thought, which any man who tried to marry her surely would. 

A hot sickness came into me when I thought of a husband holding her that way, and Constance not hurting him until he let her go again. Sometimes I wished she had a husband already, so that I could hurt him for her and make him let her go. Constance was my sister: I would protect her always. 

“Which bedlinen would you give your husband to use?” I asked. 

Constance looked up from her vegetable garden, startled. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school, Merricat?” 

“He couldn’t have the best linens, because he wouldn’t be a Blackwood, and the best sheets are for family. But the second-best sheets are kept for guests, and he wouldn’t be a guest, so he couldn’t have those either. He would have to sleep on a bare bed, I think, with no pillows or quilt.”

Constance sat back on her knees. She looked up at me where I was standing over her, and shaded her eyes with one muddy gardening glove. “What husband is this, Merricat?”

“And the finest crockery is only for Blackwoods,” I went on. “Your husband wouldn’t be a Blackwood, unless he took your name, but the Blackwood women have never given away their names for their husbands to use before. So your husband wouldn’t be able to use the finest crockery, but the second-finest is for guests, so he couldn’t use that, either. He’d have to eat from the bare table, or have his meals served slopped all in a heap on one of Uncle Julian’s trays.”

“I wouldn’t be much of a wife, I think, if I made my husband eat his meals slopped all in a heap on a tray,” said Constance. “Why are you thinking of husbands all of a sudden?” 

“And the cutlery, too,” I said. “Best is for Blackwoods. Second-best is for guests. Your husband would have to eat all his meals with his hands. Or perhaps he could peel a piece of bark from a tree on our grounds and use it to scoop his food directly into his mouth, as a sort of spoon.”

“I’m not sure I could love any man if I had to watch him using a piece of tree bark to scoop my cooking into his mouth three times a day,” said Constance. “Merricat, why _are_ you thinking of husbands? And why are you home, and not at school, which is where I am quite sure you ought to be?”

“Would you dance with him?” I asked her. 

“With my husband?” said Constance. 

I was sick again to hear those words in her voice. Constance was my sister and I would protect her always; she would never have to have a husband as long as I was there to keep her from the risk of it, I told myself, and I knew I’d have to make my promise secure as soon as I could. A husband would part us and we could not be parted. It was possible for us to be parted but it should not have been possible; it was an oversight in nature that Constance and I had come into the world able to be parted, when we should not have been. We were not safe if we were parted. We were not safe if we were able to be parted. 

I left Constance in her garden and went inside the kitchen, which was cool and quiet with Constance outside and Jonas away frolicking somewhere alone and Uncle Julian working in his bedroom. Three pots stood all in a shining silver row on a rack, one large and one middling and one small: I swept all of them crashing and clattering and tumbling to the floor and then I ran; I was almost to the top of the stairs before Constance called me, but I ran on and would not hear her and did not stop until my door was shut tight behind me. 

 

+++

 

Constance came to my door that night, and knocked. I knew it was Constance because Uncle Julian couldn’t come upstairs in his wheel-chair and Jonas had no hands to knock and the rest of our family were dead, so it could only be Constance. 

My door opened and it was Constance, as I had known it would be, with a tray. “I brought your dinner,” Constance said to me. “Uncle Julian was very excited when I told him you were sulking in your room instead of coming to dinner, you know. He’s been telling me all about how you missed dinner that night, too.”

“You didn’t bring my dinner on a tray that night,” I said. 

“No,” said Constance. “But I would have done, if the police hadn’t come. I meant to.”

“You always brought my dinner,” I said. “But you didn’t that night. I was hungry when they took me away that night.”

Constance closed my door and came in with the tray, and I sat up on my bed to watch as she placed it on my little table. “I’m sorry you were hungry that night,” Constance said to me; she swept the skirt of her dress beneath her and sat down beside me, on the edge of my bed. She looked at me for a minute and was quiet; then she said, “There’s a dent in my big pot now, Merricat. It’s going to be difficult to straighten it out again.” 

“Tell your strong husband to do it for you,” I said. 

“Oh, you _are_ in a stubborn mood today,” said Constance, exasperated. 

I turned my face away. 

“Where do you imagine I’ll find this husband, Merricat? Do you think he’ll sprout from the ground along with all my summer fruits next season? Will I have to snip him carefully from my herb garden, and take another snipping if I find the first isn’t quite satisfactory?” 

Even though Constance was exasperated she was teasing me, so I knew she couldn’t have been very exasperated; even Constance was sometimes too irritable for teasing. I wanted to smile and laugh and hold out my arms to her, and eat my warm dinner with my tray on my lap while we talked and giggled secretly together in my room, and let it all be behind us and forgotten and gone; but I couldn’t. It wasn’t behind us: it was a risk that hung over us, and I couldn’t put it from my mind. I could never be reckless enough with Constance’s safety to put it from my mind. 

Constance leaned forward to tap my knee. “And you shouldn’t play truant, my dear.”

“I don’t care for school,” I said. 

“School is a healthy environment for a growing girl,” Constance said to me, and I nearly laughed; we had been told the same thing so many times, back when they had first come and tried to coax Constance into sending me from our home and back down into the village and its school again, after the trial. “Don’t you feel ever so healthy when you study algebra, Merricat?” 

In truth, I detested school and everything about it. At all times I felt their eyes on me and I felt their gossip and their grime on me, and every time my name was in their mouths I felt that too, like little fish nibbling away at me, and I knew they meant to erode me bite by tiny bite. _Mary Katherine! oh, Mary Katherine!_ —they were piranhas, they were insatiable, they would say my name until I was only my skeleton and then they would box up my bones and send them rattling home to Constance with my midterm report card taped on top: _Must try harder; must do better; must be healthier in this healthy environment._

“I don’t care for it,” I said again, instead; I would not tell Constance the vicious truth of it. “But I’m certainly growing. I will grow so large the school falls down around me, and anyone who isn’t flattened in the rubble will be trampled instead as I come stamp-stamp-stamping back up the hill to you.”

Constance touched my hair with affection. “I wouldn’t be able to let you in the house, if you grew so very large,” she said reasonably. 

“Then I would live outside,” I said. “On sunny days I would sit in the garden, and if I raised my hand then I could give you shade wherever you worked, or keep the sun from Uncle Julian’s eyes if he wished to read in the fresh air that day; and if it rained then I would lie down on my stomach so the trees would meet above my head and shelter me, and you could bring me little sips of hot soup in a bucket, so I was warm.”

“As if I’d let you drink from a bucket! You would have a bowl like all the rest of us, my Merricat. You would have to hold it very carefully in your big fingers.”

“And you could drink from a thimble, to help you understand my difficulty. Constance,” I said, “if I come downstairs again after I’ve eaten my dinner, will you light a match for me?”

“Whatever for?”

“I can’t light one myself,” I told her. “I’m not allowed. And I have homework, which I also don’t care for.”

“Oh, Merricat,” said Constance, and she tried to make her face look disapproving; but then she laughed, and put a finger to her lips and nodded and laughed again: it would be our secret that she had helped me burn up my homework. 

Her laughter was warm inside my room, and all at once I was warm too, and the colors which surrounded me were no longer thin and insipid in the way they had been all afternoon: they were rich and good, and the walls of my bedroom became firmer as I looked at them. Nothing was diluted and everything was strong, and I knew in relief that we would be safe tonight. 

I took the tray and put it on my lap, and I ate my dinner while we talked and laughed and were together; we had safety and comfort and peace. 

My homeroom teacher was named Mrs. Arnold and I had thought to myself before first period that this meant she was married; she had had her own name taken, and a new one substituted; she had been changed by a husband in this fundamental way and would probably not recognize her own past name if someone were to address her by it, because it was no longer hers – and after this I had thought of Constance, and it was not long before my thoughts of Constance alone and in danger and not even knowing the danger she was in had brought me into a state of such fearful wildness that I had wanted to flee to her, even knowing that in the village they would see my fleeing, and would jeer and call and sing as I flew by them in my terror – but I had not fled; I had instead returned home with calm dignity, as unhurried as I could bear, because I knew that although Constance was in danger and alone she would still have wanted me to behave in public in a proper and rightful way. 

When my dinner was finished I laid my fork and knife down neatly together on my plate. “Constance Blackwood,” I said, speaking casually; it was a test. 

“Merricat Blackwood,” said Constance promptly. “What is it, Miss Merricat?”

“I love you,” I told her in relief; she laughed and called me silly, and kissed me warmly. Her name was still hers and so she was still mine and I was hers, and we were safe. 

 

+++

 

The men of the village looked at me and spoke to me more often now than they had used to. They were growing bolder, and I was growing older; our family were dead but their hatred of our family was more alive than ever, and they disliked seeing that I had become a woman while still remaining healthy and vibrant and strong, when their own daughters had been worn down grey and thin long before reaching womanhood, their lives as threadbare as their second- and third-hand clothes. 

When men looked at me now, I looked back and thought of Constance. Mike Staddon at the library’s check-out desk: I stood behind him in line and looked at the way his elbow moved as he tucked his parcel of books beneath it, and I imagined him as a husband for Constance. He would belch; he would scratch himself inside his underwear. If he put his big hand on her waist to dance with her then I would stamp on his foot until he freed her; I would keep stamping until he fell and once he fell I would stamp on him all over, not only his foot, and he would be dead and his body would lie dead before me and the blood would soak red through all of his clothes, not only his sock, and he would not put his big hand on my sister’s waist again. 

“Why, Miss Blackwood,” said Mike Staddon, when he turned from the library desk and saw I was behind him smiling. “ _What_ an honor. If I’d known you were there I’d of let you cut in front,” he told me, though he looked back to make sure the library clerk was listening to him also. “It isn’t right, making a fine young lady such as Miss Mary Katherine wait in line. She should have the best of everything, a fine young lady such as Miss Mary Katherine. She should have it first of everyone.”

There is something in my mouth, I thought; something bright and deadly, so I must be silent. I must be silent because there is smooth silver liquid mercury in my mouth, and I cannot speak because it will spill; it will run like saliva from beneath my tongue and pour all down my front and splash in a puddle on the floor, and then I will not be able to kiss Constance hello when I am home again because there will be shining silver poison on me, my clothes and skin and lips, and Constance will be hurt and wonder why: so I must be silent. 

“Gives a man a funny sort of feeling, learning there’s a Blackwood girl behind him,” Mike Staddon remarked loud enough that I and the library clerk and the few other people moving in silence in the library all could hear him clearly too. It wasn’t allowed to speak loudly in the library: I thought someone should remind him of that, but it couldn’t be me because of the silver poison which was in my mouth, and no one else spoke up at all. “Never turn your back on a Blackwood, that’s what they say... Here—you’re letting her borrow _cookbooks_?” 

“Can’t think of any other family in town who could stand to learn more from them,” said the library clerk. 

I was silent; I had to be silent; I kept myself silent and when I was home again I went straight to Constance and kissed her on the mouth hello, to show myself that my silence had been worth it, because my mouth was clean and safe, and I could be close to her without hurting her. 

“Hello to you, too,” Constance said. She wouldn’t put her arms around me, because she was busy making pie-crust and she was powdery-white all over, but she turned to me and let me hug her. “Oh, be careful, Merricat! You’ll cover yourself in flour.”

“I like flour,” I said. “I’d like to be covered in flour. Constance, you can’t have a husband, because we have no space for him here.”

“But we have a very large house,” Constance said. “We had enough space for all our family to live here, before, and we were very comfortable together.”

“Our family are dead,” I said. 

Constance was quiet. 

“They are dead,” I told her again. “All of them are dead except for us, and Uncle Julian.”

“Yes,” said Constance. “Yes, they are.”

“They are dead and won’t ever be alive again.” 

Constance was still dusty with flour from her elbows to her fingertips, which I knew was why she hesitated before she raised her hands to rest them gently on my shoulders. “Merricat,” she said, “dear Merricat, I know you’re worried about something... But you really shouldn’t be. You mustn’t worry at all: because whatever it is that’s worrying you, it won’t happen.”

“How can you say it won’t happen if you don’t know what it is?”

“Because something would have to change, in order for something new to happen. And nothing is going to change, so nothing will happen.” Constance kissed me on the forehead the way our parents had kissed me when I was young and they were alive and not yet dead, and she smiled. “I promise, my Merricat.”

I knew Constance would never lie to me, but I also knew that Constance could not read the signs the way I could: her promise was not secure, because our home was not secure. Our security had been breached and was not yet fixed, and Constance could not promise our comfort as long as we were not secure; it was vital that I found the correct magic with which to repair our safety and make our home secure again. 

The scale of the threat which faced us was greater than any I had ever known before; accordingly, I knew I would need a remedy more powerful than any I had ever used before. The safeguards which were active in our grounds remained active; I checked on them routinely, as part of my ordinary duties, and was satisfied with their condition – it was not the fault of my small devices that this was something far worse and more dangerous than they were invested with the power to repel. 

I also established several new protective measures. My hopes were highest for the fine and shining strands of gold which I took from Constance’s hairbrush and fastened carefully around a handful of thin reeds beside the creek, so that the grounds were hers and she was theirs; this would bind her, I hoped, and now she would not be able to be taken from our house. 

But it wasn’t safe to assume that this alone would be enough, and I was restless and afraid, and diligent. I worked always, searching for the correct token to pin her heart safely in place with mine, because Constance was my world. She could not become anyone else’s world because she was already mine; if she were ever to become someone else’s world then I would have no world of my own, and without a world I could not exist. 

And Constance was my sister: I would always protect her. If I did not exist, I could not protect her. If someone took her from me, I would dissolve into the air and be dust and I would not exist and could not protect her. 

Together, we were safe and happy and alive. Apart, we were not. 

 

+++

 

All things had their proper place, and that was the only place they were allowed to be. The pine trees grew in the wood; they did not grow in the meadow. The bowls were kept stacked in one pile, the small side plates in another, the big dinner plates in another; they were not all stacked wobbling in a single tall and ill-matched pile. The deep blue gems which had been strung along a necklace once owned by Uncle Julian’s wife Dorothy were buried, individually, in their own tiny plots in a flowery corner of the long field; I had stripped them from their string and buried them there so that Uncle Julian’s thoughts of her would always be pleasant and happy, and that was where they belonged. 

At night we belonged in our bedrooms – except Jonas, who always belonged wherever he liked; but recently I found I could not sleep as easily as I had always slept before, and in my dreams I was alone and I was not dreaming; I dreamed I was awake and alone and I woke gripped by such terror that sometimes I believed parts of me were missing: I had no arms, my left ear was gone, I had mislaid my heart and I would not ever get it back. 

When these dreams came and went again, I would lie awake in the darkness reminding myself of all the things which were where they should be; of the rightness of our house, arranged in its proper way, walls and floors and ceilings and roof which met and fit as they should; I was in my own room and Constance was in hers, and nothing could be wrong as long as everything which kept us right was positioned correctly. No parts of me were missing, and once I knew and believed that I was whole again I would go softly and silently to Constance’s room to show myself that she was also whole, and where she should be, and we were together and safe. 

I had dreamed Constance was gone, but she was here. She hadn’t gone. She would never go. I sat down on her bed and watched her; I curled comfortably at the empty side of her bed and rested my cheek on my folded arms and watched her. Soon I was asleep again, but I slept well, so I knew that even in my sleep I watched her still. 

“Merricat! Good heavens,” said Constance, the first time she woke and I was there; she was startled, and then she laughed and pulled me close and hugged me, and kissed me on the mouth good-morning. “I thought you were Jonas. I felt something warm and heavy in my bed, and I thought to myself, yes: that must be Jonas; he’s come to ask me for his breakfast.” 

“You were right, Constance,” I told her, laughing too. “I _am_ Jonas, and I’d like my milk served in a bone-china saucer this morning, please.” 

“Certainly, if you catch a mouse for me first. Was there a chill in your room last night?”

“No,” I said. “No – I had a bad dream. About you. Or about me; I don’t remember which.”

“Oh, my sweet Merricat,” said Constance, tender and dismayed, and she held me close again at once. “My poor, sweet Merricat: you mustn’t try to remember it. Forget all about it. I’m right here, and so are you, and both of us are well.”

“And we’ll always be here,” I said. “And we’ll always be well. Won’t we, Constance?”

“We will,” said Constance. “We will, and we’ll always be happy.”

“Together,” I said. 

“Of course,” said Constance, and I thought she was a little shocked that I had said it at all. 

I was sorry to have shocked her so early in the morning, but I was relieved to know that the idea of our ever being parted was as unthinkable to Constance as it was to me. “Together,” I said again, as a comfort for us both, “always and always and always; and happy, always and always and always.” 

“Of course,” Constance said again, and this time she was smiling as she said it. “Of course, silly Merricat. How else would we be happy, if we weren’t together?”

 

+++

 

It made me angry to think of Constance’s husband, and lately I was thinking of Constance’s husband with such frequency that some part of me was always angry, and always afraid, and it raged inside my chest and was sour like bile, corrosive like acid; it was in me always and sometimes I grew so swollen with it that I was like too-ripe fruit, on the verge of bursting and splashing the foulness inside me all over everything. 

At times like that I had to be careful, because I knew it would worry Constance if the kitchen was suddenly flooded by my acid and my anger, and I knew Jonas wouldn’t understand it wasn’t safe, and he might jump down into a puddle of it and hurt his paws, and I knew Uncle Julian would forget it wasn’t safe as soon as we told him, and he would try to wheel through it and then his tires would dissolve, and we wouldn’t be able to move him anywhere anymore; he would have to stay in the kitchen always. 

When I felt that anger swelling ripe and strong inside me, I took care to do gentle things. I would go to the meadow with Jonas and bring back flowers for Constance, and flowers for Uncle Julian’s bedside table, and flowers for the vase which stood where the hall telephone had used to sit. I would lie in the grass of the long field and watch soft clouds drift by above and remind myself of their softness, so that I could shape my thoughts as softly too; I would go along the winding footpath where my milk teeth were buried, lining the old stones in protective secret parallel, and first I would clear away the overgrown brambles from the path and then I would touch the dirt above each hidden burial site, one by one. I did gentle things and thought gentle thoughts and I made myself gentle, and only once I was safe again would I come back to the house. 

Uncle Julian was sleeping in the garden when I returned softened and safe one Saturday afternoon; the kitchen door was open, and Constance was making a tremendous noise as she scrubbed her baking tins in the sink. 

“I made a posy for Uncle Julian,” I said to her. “I put it in his empty water glass, on the tray across his knees, so he’ll see it when he wakes up.”

“I hope he doesn’t drink your flowers up before he notices them,” said Constance absently. “Do you think it’s warm enough for him to nap outside? I’m worried there might be a chill coming; perhaps I should bring him in.”

“It’s a nice warm day,” I said, dropping myself into a chair at the table. “It’s nice and warm and everything is good. Constance, I have been thinking.”

“Is that so?” Constance was drying her hands. Her baking tins shone and sparkled where they stood upside-down beside the sink and I could see that her mood was shining and sparkling too; she smiled as she turned to me. I had been right to take myself away from the house when I felt my anger’s ripeness, because now everything _was_ good, and I was soft inside and couldn’t spoil it. 

“A husband is a man who belongs to you,” I said. “And a wife is a woman who belongs to a man. But you belong here, Constance, so you couldn’t ever marry anyway. It’s not allowed, belonging to two people at once.”

“Is that really how marriage seems to you?” said Constance. She held herself still for a moment, looking down, as Jonas wound between her feet; then he jumped up to prowl along the windowsill behind me and Constance looked up again and smiled. “You _are_ a child, Merricat. I forget just how young you are, sometimes.”

“I’m _not_ young,” I said to her. “I’m a woman; you told me that yourself, Constance. And if I’m young then you are too, and you have no business getting married in the first place.”

“But I’m not getting married,” said Constance. 

“Your husband couldn’t sit at the head of the dinner table, either,” I told her. “Uncle Julian sits there. And he couldn’t sit in my seat, or your seat, and Jonas likes to nap at the other end of the table because that’s just where the last of the evening sun comes in, so he couldn’t take Jonas’s napping spot. And if he sat anywhere else then the table would be out of balance, with an odd number of people on one side. So he wouldn’t be able to sit at the table at all. Your husband would have to sit outside in the garden all on his own.”

“And scoop his food bare-handed into his mouth from where I had slopped it all onto a tea-tray, I suppose.” 

“And sleep on a bare mattress with no pillows or covers or sheets,” I said. 

“Silly Merricat,” said Constance. “Marriage isn’t quite the way you think it is. You’ll understand it better when you’re older, I expect. You’ll look back on all your funny ideas and laugh.”

“I will most certainly not,” I said. 

“Oh, but you never know,” said Constance; she was teasing, and it made her voice merry and sparkling. “Things don’t always go quite the way you thought they might, as you grow older. Why, Merricat! – before you know it, you might find yourself daydreaming of a husband of your very own.”

My chair fell backwards and then crashed onto its side and I was standing and didn’t speak. I was held too tightly to speak: my mouth could not move, my tongue could not move, my lungs could not move. 

Constance looked at me and I knew at once that she understood. “Oh, Merricat,” said Constance; she came to me slowly around the table and held out her hands, so I could see them open and harmless, because she knew I would want to be warned before she touched me. “I’ve upset you, haven’t I? I’m sorry, Merricat; I didn’t mean to. I was only being silly.”

I was still held tight; I was fastened down and closed and bound up and could not even tremble. No breath came into me and no words came out of me. 

Constance put her arms around me; she put her cheek against my hair and held me. It was better to be held by Constance than by anything, even when she smelled of Uncle Julian’s ointment as well as fresh air and clean pots. “It wasn’t nice of me to tease you like that,” she said, and she was somber. “It wasn’t kind. I’m sorry, Merricat.”

My lungs were moving again, but slowly, slowly; the air was heavy and had to be dragged in and out of me. “I _won’t_ ,” I said. “I’ll never have a husband. I’ll never want a husband. You can’t either, Constance.”

“I know,” Constance said into my hair. “I know, and it was silly of me to say it. I shouldn’t have said it.”

“There can’t be anyone else,” I said. “There isn’t anyone else. No one else exists except you and me and Uncle Julian and Jonas; all the rest of them are dead and only pretending to be alive. If you married a husband he would be dead and you would bring a dead man into our home, so you can’t.”

“Oh, Merricat,” said Constance again, and she sighed; I felt the way her chest and shoulders moved and the way her breath stirred sadly through my hair. “Do you think I like the thought of it any better than you do?” 

I did not speak; I was sick and could not speak. 

Constance stepped back but still held me, her hands on my shoulders; she was smiling, but I saw at once that her smile was not real and she did not mean it. “Where would _I_ be, without my Merricat to look after? What would I do with myself, without you?”

“Nowhere,” I said. “Nothing. We wouldn’t exist either, if we were apart; we couldn’t do anything because we wouldn’t be anyone.”

“Now who’s the silly one?” said Constance, and laughed, but I knew that her laugh was not real either; she was afraid and I was afraid, and she was only pretending that her happiness was true. “Fanciful Merricat, of course we’d exist.”

I was quiet. “We must make sure Uncle Julian hasn’t drunk up the flowers I left him.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” said Constance. 

“We chose only the prettiest ones, Jonas and I,” I said. “Soft white ones and soft blue ones and small soft delicate yellow ones. I tried to bind them together with a long blade of grass but it was too tender and it broke, so I only held them together in my hand; then I came back to the house and put them in his empty water glass, and then I came into the kitchen and spoke to my sister Constance.”

“You are speaking to me now,” said Constance. 

I went out into the garden and across the soft grass to where Uncle Julian was sleeping in the gentle sunshine in his chair; his head was to one side and his glasses were sliding down his nose. On the tray across the arms of his chair was his empty glass, and in it was the posy I had made: he had not drunk it up. 

I came back inside the kitchen. “Uncle Julian is still sleeping,” I told Constance. “He’s nice and warm outside in the garden, and safe. He hasn’t drunk up the flowers.” 

“Merricat,” said Constance to me calmly, as if she was preparing to explain something which she knew I would find strange and a little difficult; a new sort of flower, perhaps, or the correct way to darn a sock, “Merricat, I love you very much; and we _would_ exist if we were apart, I think. But it would be a sorry sort of existence, and it makes me very afraid to think of it, which is why I don’t like it when you speak of it. I know it’s silly of me to be scared, particularly because I’m older and should be braver – but, oh! it _does_ scare me; it scares me more than you can imagine – being apart from you and still existing; it scares me so badly that I think I would almost prefer it if you were right, and we would simply not exist if we were apart; I think I would prefer almost anything than if you and I—”

Constance was speaking very quickly and I knew she was trying to make sure her words all stayed ahead of her heart, so that her voice didn’t shake and her smile didn’t tremble and her pretty bright happiness didn’t let any clouds pass across it, and I couldn’t stand to see it; I was terrified to see and hear her terror, and I raced across the kitchen and threw my arms around her. 

“Merricat!” she said in astonishment, and then she laughed and hugged me tightly, and said my name a second time in relief. “Don’t go,” Constance told me; she spoke the words into my hair and I felt their warmth. “Just for today, Merricat, don’t go. Stay with me this afternoon; you can play with Jonas in the garden, and I’ll make a little egg tart for you and him to share.”

“This afternoon and forever and ever,” I said. “Forever and ever and ever. I’m always with you, Constance.”

“Oh, I hope so,” said Constance; she was holding me very tightly, and I could hear her voice was warm and fervent. “My sweet Merricat, how I hope so.”

 

+++

 

There was a line somewhere, somehow, and on one side of the line it said _here is Constance_ , and on the other side of the line it said _here is Merricat_ , and it was this line which was between us. The line had been drawn long ago, and arbitrarily, by some uncaring hand, and I did not think it was right that even after so many years this line had still not relented and gone away and allowed us to decide for ourselves just where it was that our separate selves ended and began. 

Perhaps it had been correct for us to be categorized as separate people when I had been only a baby; perhaps if I had never known myself as Merricat alone then I would have grown up strangely, and confused about who I was. But I was grown up now, and I couldn’t imagine there would be any danger to either of us if the line was erased. There was no longer any need for this forbidding boundary to exist between us, particularly when our separation caused us nothing but fear and danger. 

If this line was gone, then nothing would be between us. And if nothing was between us, then there would be no space for anything else ever to be between us. Nothing would be able to divide us, or part us, or take us from each other. 

And there would certainly be no space between us for a husband – but that was not important, in any case; there was nothing a husband could do for Constance that I couldn’t, except take her name away from her and give her a baby. 

 

+++

 

“It would be safest of all if we were the same person,” I said to Constance. “We’d always be together, that way. We’d never have to be apart because no one would ever be able to find a way to take us apart, because we’d be the same person.”

“But wouldn’t we be lonely?” said Constance. We were in her room and in her bed and she spoke softly, as if our family were all around us in their own rooms and sleeping, instead of dead. “I wouldn’t have you for company, Merricat, if you were me. And you wouldn’t have me. We wouldn’t have anyone.”

“We’d still be two people,” I said. “Only – two people, _together_. Two people in one. We’d never be lonely. It wouldn’t be possible for us to be lonely.” All over the pillow was Constance’s hair. If I moved carelessly it would be trapped beneath me and hurt her, so I took some of it gently in my fingers and moved it myself, so I could be closer to her without hurting her. Her husband wouldn’t care if he trapped and pulled her hair and hurt her, I thought; but I did. I cared. Constance was my sister: I would always protect her. “I would still be Merricat,” I said. “And you would still be Constance. But no one would ever make Merricat go to school, because Constance would be too old for school, and no one would ever make Constance marry, because Merricat would be too young to marry. And we’d always know where the other one was, because that’s where we’d always be; we’d never be able to lose each other, or be parted.” 

“I’d like that, I think. I’d like to always know where you’ve gone running off to when you have chores to do,” said Constance, and I could see in her eyes and hear in her voice that she was smiling. “But what would happen when I needed to make our lunch and you wanted to crawl headfirst through a bramble patch instead? Would we go hungry, or would you agree to stay patiently in the kitchen?”

This was a problem I hadn’t considered. I lay on my side and examined Constance’s face all over and in her eyes I could see she was still smiling; she was smiling as long as she was looking at me. “We’d be able to separate ourselves again,” I decided. “That way you could make my dinner and I could go around outside and keep us safe, but when we wanted to be together again, we could stop being two people and go back to being one person instead. That way we could still do our own important things.” 

“In _that_ case, my dear, I don’t think you’d have any excuse for not going to school.”

“I don’t like going to school,” I said obstinately. 

“I don’t like you going to school, either,” Constance said, and turned her face quickly away from mine. All she could see now was her own ceiling; she couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t see her eyes to tell if there was a smile still in them. “I’m sorry, Merricat, I shouldn’t—I didn’t mean to say that. It’s selfish of me.”

Something in her voice was trembling. I heard it, and it made me feel that I was trembling too. “Constance,” I said; I rose up on my elbow so I could see her face but she would not look at me; she would not turn her face to mine again. “Constance!”

“I never want to be selfish,” Constance told her ceiling. “I only want to care for my sister Merricat. I want what’s best for her. I want everything that’s best for her.”

It scared me to hear that trembling in her voice, and being scared gave me a wild feeling. I wanted to run and I wanted to spin around and around and I wanted to race through the village and stamp down the bones of every man I saw so that none of them would ever think themselves a husband to Constance, so that none of them would ever think of Constance at all; I felt that my heart inside me was being shaken as hard as a salt cellar, and I was even more afraid when I felt my wildness was still growing wilder inside my shaken heart. 

“ _You_ are what’s best for me,” I said. “My sister Constance is everything that’s best for me. And I’m everything that’s best for her. Constance,” I said again; she would not look at me and in my fear I thought perhaps she could not see me, perhaps she had never seen me, perhaps I was as dead as Uncle Julian believed. Perhaps I had never been alive. I detested school and rarely went and I would not go back again: I could not stand to be apart from Constance and know that she couldn’t stand to be apart from me. “Constance!”

Constance was quiet; she was taking long careful breaths and letting them out again. I found her hand and held it tight and at last she turned her face to mine again. “I’m sorry,” Constance told me bravely. “Tell me more about what you were saying before, Merricat. Before I said those silly things.”

“They weren’t silly,” I said. “I love you. I won’t leave you. You know everything I need to know, anyway; there isn’t anything school could teach me that you couldn’t – not anything that matters. Everything I know about joy and flowers and poison I’ve learned from you, Constance.” 

“Tell me anyway,” said Constance. “I liked it.”

Her hand was still in mine beneath the blankets. I fastened our fingers: now we were secure. “Like this,” I said, holding tight. “Like this – but then the difference between us would stop. Your hand would be my hand and my hand would be your hand, and we would be the same. We would be together. Always,” I said. “Always,” I said again, and held tighter. I thought of it often, and knew how it would happen; skin and flesh would yield and merge together, changing in the same way that bread-dough changed when Constance kneaded it: many parts which were soft and separate but which could be patiently worked together until all of it became one single thing, and was whole, in a process which was natural and good. 

But we were still two people, even with our hands fastened so tightly and securely with each other’s. We were two people even when I made myself think soft thoughts of shapes whose edges blurred and ran together. We were two people, always. 

I was disappointed but I loved her, and I leaned over Constance to kiss her and reassure her in the normal way that I loved her. She smiled at me tenderly with her eyes and mouth when I drew back. Her hand was still in mine; we were still two people. 

I leaned down again and kissed her longer. We had two mouths: we were two people. But she was hot here; I could feel against my closed lips that her mouth was hot, and everything which was wild in me was burning too, and I realized in a sudden powerful rush that maybe here was where the boundaries between us were thinnest. Here, where we were hottest; where we were closest to the surface of ourselves, and our selves were closest to freedom – maybe _here_ was the power which might at last secure us together for all time, and I pushed my mouth hard against hers. 

We were two people and could be separated and that was our greatest danger – but this was where the divide between us was most fragile, I thought; I knew it in my heart and whole body. This was the way we could be closest; this was the way we could be safest. 

“Merricat,” said Constance, when I had to breathe. “What are you doing?”

Her question was gentle, but I was wild and couldn’t speak. I kissed her longer again; if my mouth was against hers long enough then the line which kept us separate would be burned through, and we would be together; we would be unable to be parted. We would become so near that we would never be apart again. 

“You’re out of breath,” Constance said, when I drew back gasping. She touched her fingers curiously to my cheek. “Is this another of your imagination games, Merricat?”

My hair was falling all around her face, because I still leaned over her. “No,” I said. “No. Constance, if you had a husband then I’d protect you from him.” 

“Brave Merricat,” Constance said with fondness. 

“I’d be inside you always and I would hurt him to make him let you go,” I said. “You wouldn’t have to, because I would do it. He’d never be able to take you away from me because he’d never be able to decide which parts of us were Constance and which were Merricat.” 

“Brave, silly Merricat,” said Constance. “You’re very kind, to always think of protecting me. But you won’t be able to sleep if you get yourself all worked up now,” she added firmly, and raised her face to give me her usual quick kiss good-night, “so sweet dreams, Merricat, and please don’t go rampaging around too loudly before breakfast tomorrow morning; you know it gives Uncle Julian trouble.”

Power was whirling through me at such a speed I thought I could hear it: a sound like the faraway roar of wind which blew through the attic on stormy days, strong and unseen. “I never rampage anywhere,” I said, and lay down at Constance’s side again; I moved slowly, and carefully, so that this new force inside me would not spill out and harm her. “I’m just in a hurry to be awake. Jonas and I believe it’s important to begin each day vigorously.”

“Then please try to be vigorous a little more quietly,” said Constance. “You _and_ Jonas, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll pass the message on, but I can’t guarantee his co-operation. Jonas is a very independent-minded cat; all his opinions are strong and all his behavior is willful, so you see he only chooses to follow orders if he approves of them.” 

“I’m sure I don’t know who he learned _that_ from,” said Constance, and she gave me a smile full of sleepiness and love before she turned her face comfortably into her pillow and let her eyes fall closed. “Good night, Merricat.”

I lay awake and watching as Constance fell asleep and I lay awake and watching afterwards; I lay awake for a long time that night. I could not have slept, because the power within me kept me awake. I could feel it rushing through me again and again: it was a hot burning living thing, and I had caught it and brought it inside me and trapped it there, and now all it could do was rush and burn through the closed circuit of my body. It raced scorching from my head to my toes and round and round again, through my heart and up and down my limbs and all the way through the neatly coiled insides of my stomach and brain; it was hotter than anything, and stronger than anything. The room was dark and the house was still and Constance lay beside me with her cheek against her pillow, her hair spilled all over everywhere, her breathing quiet and warm, and I knew that if I was opened up then I would see my bones glowing white-hot with the furious molten radiance of the power which was in me now. 

We had been safe before, always. We would be safer now, because I was stronger. I was wild and alive; I was powerful, and better than fire. 

 

+++

 

I did not go to school again. If they cared in the village that I did not go to school again, we never knew about it; our telephone was silenced and all letters we burned unopened, and continually we added to our secret list of people whom we would not receive inside our home and not acknowledge and not allow our eyes to see. The foul black tendrils of the village swayed and reached up towards us with hunger as mindless as the vines of some strangling carnivorous plant, but they would not touch us again. We did not wish to be contacted, and we would not be contacted. 

The pattern of my days in freedom was happier, and simpler. It had been a Tuesday when it happened, so now Tuesdays were days for kissing longer, and the other days were only days for thinking of it. I was still allowed to kiss Constance in the normal way, hello and goodbye and good morning and good night and I love you and I miss you and I would like a treacle tart for dinner tonight with the pastry all golden and criss-crossed in neat lines on top and Jonas used your herb garden as a toilet for cats, Constance, I’m sorry, but it was only because he likes treacle tart so much – but kissing in the other way, the longer way, which brought me power and brought Constance protection and made both of us secure: kissing in that way was only for Tuesdays. 

I thought that perhaps in the future I might discover it was safe on other days, too; but for now it was only Tuesdays, and the scalding breathless power which I trapped inside me on Tuesdays was fierce and strong enough that it burned inside me all week until another Tuesday came around, and kept us safe on all seven days of the week and each week of each month and I thought that it would also last for each month of every year, forever, because we would always be together and never be apart and that meant we would exist always. 

Now that I’d kissed Constance longer, it was what I wanted every time I kissed her quickly. It was difficult to know how powerful I could be and then keep myself from that power; but it was worth it, because we were safe. We were safe and not afraid. We were safe and we would never be afraid again. 

 

+++ 

 

“It was brighter than this, I believe, on the last morning,” Uncle Julian remarked. “It was not excessively bright, but certainly it was sunny to an extent. If it had not been sunny we would not have gone outside to enjoy the sun, and I am sure we were outside that morning; although perhaps there was no sun, and if there was then perhaps we did not enjoy it. Constance?” 

“Yes, Uncle?” 

“It is with regret I must inform you, Constance, that I seem to have spilled a little of my porridge.” 

“Then I shall wash your blanket after breakfast,” Constance told him. “It can dry outside this afternoon, and you will have it back before the evening begins to cool again. Lazy Merricat, are you dawdling? Eat up, before your cereal goes all to pieces in its milk and you tell me it’s too messy to finish.” 

But I was not dawdling. I was thinking of Uncle Julian’s spilled porridge, and the omen which I saw at once that it contained: secretive and sly, hidden from Constance’s sight but not from mine. Porridge slipping from a spoon, and cereal dissolving in milk: they were not signs of something good. The day took on a slippery feeling, and I was alert for further signs; I knew if I wasn’t as careful as I could be then it would become a day of things sliding from control, slick and slippery and unpredictable: a day of accidents. 

I was powerful in a new way, but it was still important to be careful. If I became overconfident we might still be at risk; if I thought I was so strong that nothing could ever threaten us again, then certainly something of new and hideous strength would come at once and try to bring us fear. 

The kitchen door was open as it always was in the mornings, letting the fresh air and Jonas come in and out and move around as they pleased. I was quietly eating my cereal when Jonas raced inside again, with his fluffy tail plastered down all wet and thin-looking and his fur clinging damply to his sides, so we knew he had run straight into the bushes: they were often soaked with dew this early in the day, and now so was Jonas. 

Jonas’s wet fur wasn’t an omen on its own, but coming so close on the heels of Uncle Julian’s spilled porridge it was certainly a cause for concern; and then I remembered suddenly that I had seen the long glistening trail of a passing snail on Constance’s windowsill when I opened her curtains earlier that morning, and had wondered at it having climbed so high up our house’s side: and I knew at once that something was attempting to test our new security. 

“I’m going to go around with Jonas this morning, I think.” I put my spoon down in my empty bowl and stood; I was calm, so that Constance would be calm too and not afraid. “But I’ll be back for lunch, so please make something dry, Constance, without sauces or syrups or juices. It’s very important that all our food is dry today.”

“Funny Merricat,” said Constance. “Your wet cat is using my nice clean tablecloth as a towel, I think.”

“Then he isn’t my wet cat anymore; he’s my clever cat.” 

Jonas knew we were talking about him; he jumped up on the table, and we put our noses together so we could look closely at each other. His eyes were yellow and clever; his fur was nearly dry again already, and I recognized with pleasure that this was also a sign: a bad omen had begun to reverse itself already, and this meant I would easily be able to block whatever the rest of this slippery day was planning. 

“Toast would be good for lunch today, I think,” I said to Constance. “Jam and honey are more sticky than slippery, so they’re still safe. We can have toast and jam or toast and honey, and tonight we can have an especially large dinner to make up for our small lunch this afternoon.”

“Perhaps a hard-boiled egg for Uncle Julian,” said Constance thoughtfully, “all soft and mashed, with small pieces of toast and just a little salt; I don’t think he would like to have only toast and jam. And I shall wash his blanket while you’re gone, so I will stay busy and forget to be lonely.”

I told Constance twice to make sure she was cautious in my absence: once before I kissed her goodbye, and once after. “And I love you,” I told her again, “and I’ll be back very soon, and we will be safe; we will be as safe as can be,” and I kissed her goodbye a second time and went out into our grounds with my clever cat Jonas racing on ahead of me along the firm dirt paths. 

It was a fine clear day, with spring preparing to tip over into the summertime and our woods grown dense and strong and dark where they stood protective around our home. The sky which Jonas and I saw in scraps through the treetops was blue and bright; the sky we saw when we raced each other laughing to the top of a tall oak near the meadow was even bluer and even brighter, and as wide as the world. 

We scrambled down again from the high branches and ran together through the tall grass in the field and it whipped against my chest and was not wet at all: the dew had dried already as the bright sun shone down and stole away its wetness. Even the dew which had lain on the flowers in Constance’s garden would be drying up by now, I thought; our home was so strong and secure that it was protecting itself, recognizing and pushing away threats without my help, and I was so full of joy that I laughed aloud. 

Afterwards I went around the limits of our grounds, moving carefully and in silence as I passed through the places where the woods did not grow so thickly against our fence, and where someone on the other side might have seen my shape through the leaves if they had looked as I went by. But our fence was also secure, aside from one small rip in the wire along the southern edge which I fixed myself, quickly and unafraid, while Jonas twisted through my feet and sang a purring song about the morning and bright sunshine; we followed our fence all the way around and it was safe, from side to side and end to end, all our wide and beautiful grounds were safe and the day was secure. 

“We all have lives filled with joy, here in our family’s old fine home,” I told Jonas, and he told me with a twitch of his tail that he agreed. 

We came all the way around and back to the end of our path, which was the place which marked where Blackwood land and Blackwood safety ended. I stood by the black rock and looked out across the village below; I imagined that if I swept out my arm across that ugly rotted view then the power inside me would come as fire from my fingertips and everything I swept my hand across would burn. The women who stepped away from me and whispered and gossiped and the men who were silent and watchful when I walked by and the children who laughed and mocked and sang: I would throw my arms out wide and all of them would burn; everyone who had ever spoken Constance’s name as though it was something rancid in their mouth would burn; their houses would burn; the town hall would burn and the streets would burn and no cars would ever pass through the village again. No people would ever pass through the village again. No one would ever go in or out of it again, and Constance and I would be safe together in our home which was an island now, forever ringed by fire. 

I thought of them all burning and dead and I laughed; I was so full of joy. I was powerful, and we would be safe. Nothing I had ever feared in all my life would come to pass. 

I whirled around and ran with Jonas all the way back up the path to our house and the gentle breeze was full of joy too and came with us, pleasant and warm, sweet-scented, and we ran into the garden where Uncle Julian was sitting comfortably in his chair and paging through his notes on the little table beside him with care, and he did not greet me because he believed mistakenly that I was dead when in fact I was not dead: I was alive, and had never known it more strongly than I knew it now. I was alive and I would never be dead and I existed and I would always exist; I would never be apart from Constance and so I would always exist. 

We must be safe, I thought; we must be as safe as can be, and then I remembered that I had promised Constance just that and I laughed aloud again, full of joy, because I knew that to think it twice made it twice as important. The bad omens which had tried to slip in through the cracks this morning had not been successful, but they should be taught a lesson, I decided; they should learn that they were not welcome, and their intrusion would not be permitted. 

Constance was wiping down the table with a cloth when I burst into the kitchen; she was wearing her green dress printed with small flowers and her apron tied over it, and she looked up at me and smiled. “Whirlwind Merricat,” she said to me; I went to her and kissed her hello, and Constance was smiling afterwards too. 

I kissed her again, and kissed her longer, although it was not a Tuesday and we were not in Constance’s room and it was not the night; but the act was so powerful that even used wrongly I knew it would be strong enough to drive out every last trace of any threat which had ever forced its way obscenely into the safety of our home. Every act of spite and hate and malice against us and every will to harm us and every moment of our fear and danger and every bad omen had left its shadow on our home; the shadows were faint but many, and I felt all of them moving together now in a silent blackness, gathering against the walls and rising up them; they wished to spread across the ceiling and cocoon us in their united darkness, but they would not. 

I breathed again, and Constance laughed and put her hand to my hot cheek. “Did you miss me, my dear, those long minutes in the garden?” she asked me, teasing; I nodded because I could not yet speak again. “I missed you too,” said Constance, and looked at me with quiet thoughtfulness. “What was that really for, Merricat?” 

“Safety,” I said. 

“Whose?” 

I always answered Constance: that was a rule, but already I had drawn so much power into me that I knew I couldn’t risk speaking again without it rushing from my mouth like dragon’s flame, and I would not endanger Constance that way. I kissed her again and thought of the power trapped inside me now burning out of me, strong and unseen. Even with my eyes shut tight I knew it was blazing out from me like fire and every trace of blackness in our walls was being chased away by it, chased into corners and cracks and then chased even into hiding and burned away there, burned up to nothing so it was nothing and it was gone and we were safe; we were safe. We were together and we were safe. 

Constance stepped back but the sink was behind her. I put my hand on her waist where no husband would touch her ever and I kissed her again. Her hand was still against my cheek and I thought maybe it was my own hand, and her own cheek, because although we were two people we were close; we could hardly have been closer. It was not important which of us was which. 

“Not where Uncle Julian will see,” Constance said to me afterwards, speaking very softly and close. 

“Why not?” I asked. “He’s busy with his work, anyway. And Uncle Julian doesn’t mind kissing, I think; he’s never complained about it before, and he always complains when he minds something.”

“He could hardly have complained about it before when he hasn’t seen it before,” said Constance. 

“Of course he’s seen it before, silly,” I said, laughing at her. “Every morning and every night, and whenever I leave and come back; and don’t you kiss him on the forehead, too? And Jonas and I often touch noses, which is a kiss in the language of cats. And Uncle Julian would probably have kissed his wife, I think, before she was poisoned and died; I don’t think he would have kissed her after. So you see he doesn’t mind at all,” I explained, and put my other hand on her waist and kissed her again; the power scorched so strongly through me that I knew everything in our home which had ever been unclean was burned away and gone. 

Constance moved towards me when I moved back, and then she stopped. “This is different from that, I think,” she told me; she seemed uncertain, but I was not. Again I kissed her and she sighed in a sweet way and laid her hand against my hair. “But I think it is,” Constance told me again, afterwards. “I think kissing this way is different.”

“Of course it’s different,” I said. “Kissing this way is better. It’s stronger, which is safer. The kitchen is clean now, Constance.”

“What does that have to do with you kissing me?” Constance said. 

“Silly Constance,” I said, and laughed again; I was so full of joy. “Why else would I be kissing you? We’re home and safe and together and our house is clean and safe and fair; _that’s_ why I was kissing you. Our home is very secure.” 

Constance looked at me for a minute and then she laughed too; she put her hand across her mouth and turned away and I saw in her eyes that she was still smiling, even with her mouth covered up and hidden. “I never heard anything sillier,” she said to the yellow tablecloth which was folded neatly on the kitchen table, ready to be taken outside and unfolded on the garden table for our lunch. “I don’t think anyone’s ever said anything sillier. If you want so very badly to be helpful then you may set the table for our lunch, my Merricat.”

I did what Constance asked. It was good to be in the kitchen and feel it safe again; it was good to stand in our home and know that it was more secure than it had ever been. Constance was my sister and my world: I would protect her always. 

We were together and we were safe and I knew without doubt that we would always be together and we would always be safe. It was a nice warm day, and everything was good.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> To AO3 singedsun: I love this book with all my heart, and I was overjoyed not only to match on it, but to match on your particular fantastic prompts! Thank you so much for the opportunity to write this, and I hope you have a very merry Yuletide.


End file.
